Percy Bysshe Shelley cytaty

strona 6

„Podróżnik, wracający z starożytnej ziemi,
Rzekł do mnie: „Nóg olbrzymich z głazu dwoje sterczy
Wśród puszczy bez tułowia. W pobliżu za niemi
Tonie w piasku strzaskana twarz. Jej wzrok szyderczy,

Zacięte usta, wyraz zimnego rozkazu
Świadczą, iż rzeźbiarz dobrze na tej bryle głazu
Odtworzył skryte żądze, co, choć w poniewierce,
Przetrwały rękę mistrza i mocarza serce.

A na podstawie napis dochował się cało:
«Ja jestem Ozymandias, król królów. Mocarze!
Patrzcie na moje dzieła i przed moją chwałą

Gińcie z rozpaczy!» Więcej nic już nie zostało…
Gdzie stąpić, gruz bezkształtny oczom się ukaże
I piaski bielejące w pustyni obszarze.”

„Przyjaźń, drogi balsam… Uśmiech pośród zachmurzonych twarzy; umiłowany promień słońca; uścisk w samotności; schronienie w trudnościach; radość w smutku.”

„Spójrz na me dzieło, o Potężny, i rozpaczaj.
… wokół szczątków
Tego kolosalnego wraku pustynia się roztacza,
Naga, dzika i płaska, bez końca ni początku.”

„Codzienne obowiązki stają się piękne dzięki miłości.”

„O, jakże chciałbym być Antychrystem (…).”

“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”

“GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.”

“Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame.”

“There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.”

“What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.”

“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”

“Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England — thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.”

“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose… that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”

“Most musical of mourners, weep again!”

“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.”

“Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.”

“Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.”

“The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack a sacred bard]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men.”

“That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.”

“If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.”

“I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.”

“Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.”

“Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon —
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night —
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!”

“A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.”

“I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.”

“But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.”

“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.”

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”

“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

“One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.”

“The breath
Of accusation kills an innocent name,
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life,
Which is a mask without it.”

“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

“And bid them love each other and be blest:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.”

“Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.”